California “Early Learning Foundations”

This spring you will have several opportunities to influence California’s expectations for preschoolers’ development.
The Child Development Division of the California Department of Education is doing a great job at inviting—and listening to!—input from the Early Care and Education community as they develop their “Early Learning Foundations” in four areas:
* Social/emotional development
* English language learning (for kids whose first language is not English)
* Language and literacy
* Mathematics
(next year they will add other areas).
These are not supposed to be tests or requirements, but descriptions of typical development in three- and four-year-olds.
The fact that they start with social/emotional development and English learning is already a sign that the CDD has listened to the field. (Their first standards were just for literacy and math, but they heard from a lot of people that social/emotional development and English learning were essential).
The first draft of the “foundations” was developed by researchers looking at a lot of studies and experience from the field.
The department then invited “stakeholders” to four all-day sessions to give feedback. I attended two of those sessions and I have to say I was really impressed with the level of discussion. On the whole, people were very pleased with the drafts, but they weren’t shy about making dozens and dozens of criticisms and suggestions for change, which the researchers and CDD people received very graciously--they seemed eager to make changes based on the input. So that was very cool.
Their goal is to incorporate the suggestions and get the next draft on the web site by April 9.
The next step is public regional input meetings, to be hosted by the California Preschool Instructional Network (CPIN) around the state in the next few months. There will also be an opportunity to give input on the foundations on the web site.
After that, hearings on the foundations will be held in mid-May.
Dates/times/places for the regional meetings are not yet available, but you can see a general outline of the process at http://www.sonoma.edu/cihs/cpin/standards.htm. When more info is available, I’ll let you know.

The "self-esteem" trap

A professor at San Diego State has discovered that today’s college students are more self-centered and full of themselves than previous generations. Professor Jean Twenge gave kids a test for “narcissism” – that means basically that you think you’re all that and a bag of chips and nobody else is important. Two-thirds rated high on that scale, compared to only one-third in the ‘80s.
What's the problem?
The researchers—Tweng and Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, say this is a problem because people who are narcissistic "are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors."
They blame efforts to promote kids’ “self-esteem.” For example, they quote a song they say is commonly sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques" in preschool: "I am special, I am special. Look at me."
But we want kids to feel secure and confident, right?
I think the problem is that our culture is so competitive and individualistic that we don’t know how to feel good about ourselves without feeling that we are better than other people. We think those are the same thing.
Actually, they are opposite.
If our feeling of safety and confidence is based on rating higher than others, we are continually anxious, somewhere deep down, about the possibility that someone will come along and rate higher than us. That’s why the researchers describe narcissistic people as being so tightly wound.
There's an alternative!
There is another choice. Actually, it’s the ethic that has been traditional in early childhood education: Everyone is important. You can feel secure because you are loved, however you perform. Everyone’s contribution is valuable. We are all valuable because we are part of the human family, which is part of the larger family of all living things on earth.
I remember, after years of therapy, the moment I said to the shrink: “Now I understand that love is different from getting a high score.”
Different consequences
Now, if you are trying to make kids nervous enough so that they work hard to perform well on standardized tests and grow up to be the kinds of people who work long hours and do whatever they are told because they are desperate to make a lot of money and achieve high status, you won’t want that. You will want people to compete for the limited amount of “self-esteem” that comes from winning a scarce prize.
But if you want children to feel safe and confident enough to learn and explore, and to grow up treasuring and nurturing their relationships with other people, you’ll award prizes less, and hug and smile more.
Get this book!
Recently a children’s book called “Hooray for Me!” arrived in our office. At first I was disgusted, because of this narcissism thing. But because it was illustrated by Vera Williams, who I think is great, I looked at it. And I was delighted to see that expresses exactly the values I think we should be teaching kids.
Who’s “me?” the book asks. And a picture shows dozens of houses with kids in them, each saying, “I’m me!’ “I’m me too!” “Me too!” etc.
Then the book asks: “What kind of me are you?” (Uh-oh, I thought. Here comes “the fastest runner,” “the best singer,” etc.)
But the answer was all about relationships: daughter, nephew, half-sister, friend, etc.
And they elaborate: “I am my baby brother’s sister.” I am my mother and father’s son.” All the way to “I am a great-grand-kitten.”
The book ends with a poem that concludes: “Hooray for us! Whatever we be. Hooray for you, Hooray for me.”
By Remy Charlip and Lilian Moore, illustrated, as I said, by Vera B. Williams, Tricycle Press.
Run out and get it!

Sexualization of girls: Fighting back

I was excited to see that people are starting to fight back against the psychologically crippling sexualization of girls being promoted by toy and clothing manufacturers and the media:
* The American Psychological Association recently published a report explaining the harmfulness of the sexualization of girls—check it out at www.apa.org/pi/wpo/sexualization.html.
* Last year a letter-writing campaign organized by Dads and Daughters (http://www.dadsanddaughters.org/) and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (http://www.commercialexploitation.org/) led to the cancellation of a line of dolls based on the Pussycat Dolls, a musical group known for their sexualized clothing and lyrics.
(check out their new campaigns!)
In a commentary published Feb. 26 in the SF Chronicle, Eileen Zurbriggen, associate professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Cruz, who chaired the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, pointed to the beauty pageant in Little Miss Sunshine as an example of this trend, but added that there are many:
“Signs of it are everywhere,” she wrote. “On a t-shirt for a 6-year-old girl that proclaims her a "Little Hottie;" on dolls that sport fishnet stockings, bare midriffs and platform shoes; and in a music video that shows busty women performing sexy dances while dressed in Brownie uniforms. . . .
“The problem isn't one particular doll, or song or hypersexualized young heiress. The problem is that girls today are swimming in a veritable sea of toxic messages about what it means to be female.”
After a generation of feminism, the strength and health we so want girls to develop is being threatened by pressure to look at themselves as sex objects—or face the penalties of not being considered cool and attractive--remember how hard that is, as a kid?
Zurbriggen and the APA are calling on people to resist this assault on girls:
“We must continue to urge manufacturers and media producers to replace sexualized images of girls with images that present girls and young women as active, competent individuals who have their own goals, desires and dreams.
“Schools can help, too. Media literacy training programs help children to become active and critical interpreters of media messages, rather than passive consumers. These programs should be available to all middle-school students.
“Finally, parents can talk with their daughters and let them know they are loved and valued for who they are, rather than for how they look.”

Fairer school discipline for LA?

The Los Angeles Unified School District just unanimously passed a new, districtwide student discipline policy based on “positive behavior support,” that would allow suspension and expulsion as options only for the most serious offenses like possession of a gun or causing serious injury.
For more routine problems, the policy calls for things like positive reinforcement of good behavior, mentoring, discussions with parents and/or students or, at the most, in-school suspension. The policy also emphasizes greater parent involvement in resolving discipline problems.
The development of a system-wide, less punitive discipline policy is a victory for CADRE, a community-based parent organization in South L.A., and other community groups that have been campaigning for a comprehensive student discipline policy based on prevention, alternatives to school removals, strong parent participation, and monitoring and evaluation of school discipline practices.
In a survey of parents, CADRE found that schools often use suspension as the first step rather than a last resort. The group has also shown a connection between high rates of suspension and high dropout rates. All these issues affect disproportionate numbers of African American and Latino students, who some say are “pushed out” of school with punishments that emphasize getting kids out of the class or the school rather than working to change their behavior.
You can read an LA Times article about the new discipline policy at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-discipline12feb12,1,1567250.story
We'll have an article about this in the May issue of the Children's Advocate, in our Grassroots Snapshot department, so be sure to check that out for more details.
You can contact CADRE at 323-752-9997.

Hope boosts educational achievement

A new study at Stanford, recently reported in Child Development, shows that if kids know that intelligence can be developed, they do better in school than kids who think it’s fixed at a certain level.
NPR recently reported on a study by researcher Carol Dweck in which “about 100 seventh graders, all doing poorly in math, were randomly assigned to workshops on good study skills. One workshop gave lessons on how to study well. The other taught about the expanding nature of intelligence and the brain.
The students in the latter group ‘learned that the brain actually forms new connections every time you learn something new, and that over time, this makes you smarter.’
By the end of the semester, the group of kids who had been taught that the brain can grow smarter had significantly better math grades than the other group.”
(This is one reason kids from the US don’t do so well in international comparisons. Our culture tells people they either “have it” or they don’t. And some are given the message that people in their ethnic group don’t have it, academically. In other cultures kids are more likely to think success comes from hard work. )
To read the full NPR report, go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7406521

Government coverup of lead hazard in lunch boxes

The bad news is that some of the vinyl lunch boxes that kids use to bring their lunches to school contain levels of lead that are considered unsafe.
The even worse news is that the federal Consumer Products Safety Commission tested the vinyl lunch boxes, found out about these high lead levels, then released a statement in 2005 saying it found “no instances of hazardous levels” of lead in kids’ vinyl lunch boxes.
The truth only came out when the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records of the CPSC tests. (The agency had said they wouldn’t release the records to protect manufacturers’ trade secrets.)
The CPSC defended itself by saying that kids’ don’t put lunchboxes in their mouths and a lot of the food is wrapped anyway, so the high lead levels aren’t a problem.
So is the current US administration covering up for business and failing to give consumers adequate information about hazards? What do you think?
You can read the CNN story about this at http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/18/lunchbox.lead.ap/index.html

A strong call to action for kids

We're usually pretty timid in the child advocacy world. Because most of us work for 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations, we shy away from "politics" or advocacy.
But you know as well as I do that the conservative politics of the last 25 years, starting with the "Reagan revolution," have been devastating for children and families.
Now a longtime advocate for children has written a call to action--a short book that provides facts and figures on how shockingly the U.S. neglects its children and calls on us to mobilize to make children's issues central to the 2008 presidential election.
The author is Michael Petit, who left management positions at organizations like the Child Welfare League of America to launch a new organization, called (this is important) Every Child Matters. (www.everychildmatters.org, obviously).
His book is called Homeland Insecurity: American Children at Risk. Here's a short quote from the first chapter:
"Federal programs have failed to keep pace with the growing needs of children. . . . Thanks in large part to the erosion of real federal spending on children and families, mostly engineered by conservatives, the child poverty rate is rising again even as the stock market has climbed. Further, more people are uninsured, real wages are declining, prisons are overflowing, and millions of children live in distressed families facing their struggles alone, thanks in large measure to conservative policy."
The book goes on to compare the U.S. to other rich democracies on measures like child poverty, paid maternity leave, health insurance, child care, child abuse, rates of imprisonment--if you have been paying attention to children's issues you already know that the U.S. is miserably behind in all these areas. But some of these facts and figures will shock you--or at least give you great ammunition for arguments.
What do we need? The first thing, Petit says, is public financing of elections. Why? Because if we, the public, don't finance campaigns, big corporations and wealthy individuals will keep doing it--and they will keep wielding the power to push children's issues off the table. As they have been doing. As you well know.
What else? Well, single-payer health care. (Let's take the 30% of every health care dollar that now goes to insurance companies and spend it on health care! That would be enough to give everybody high-quality, comprehensive care.) Universal high-quality preschool and child care, obviously. Greatly expanded housing, nutrition, and income support programs, family support programs -- everything that you know we need. We know these things work. It's not rocket science. Our society has just not been willing to pay for it.
But doesn't all this cost money, you will ask? YES! How will we pay for it? With TAXES, duh! Tax breaks for the wealthy have crippled our society's ability to take care of children (and other people). The rich are getting richer and the rest are getting poorer because of these goverment policies. They have undone the progressive tax system. Let's get it back!
Maybe I am expressing myself too forcefully here, but I just heard Petit speak and I was inspired! He came right out and said these things that we all know but are too polite to mention in public.
And he has a plan to make things change--a strategy for putting these issues at the center of the 2008 presidential campaign--without blowing our precious 501(c)3s. This post is already too long, you should just read the book. But one of his plans is to work through child-serving organizations to get parents, child care providers, and other children's service workers to vote -- voting rates are very low in these groups. If they all voted, it would shift the political balance, especially on these issues. He also has plans for mobilizing to make sure all the presidential candidates address these issues as they run in the primaries.
You should really read this book. It's very short, to the point, and explosive. You can download it free at http://www.everychildmatters.org/homelandinsecurity/index.html. Then you should tell everybody you know all about it, and we should all get to work.
How can we tolerate what's happening to children and families any longer?

Save Family and Medical Leave -- update!

Hi again -- I just found out that you now have until Feb. 16 to get your comments on the Family and Medical Leave Act to the Dept. of Labor (see previous post) -- so now you have no excuse for not doing it! Thanks for helping to save this minimal family benefit (reminder: the U.S. is one of only four counties without PAID maternity leave. Family values, right?)